O'Mara still guiding Supercross's next generation

By Eric Johnson 

After a brilliant summer-long fight with fierce rivals Mark Barnett, Jeff Ward and Ron Lechien, Johnny O’Mara snagged the 1983 AMA 125cc National Championship. One year later, O’Mara earned the 1984 AMA Supercross Series Championship. Along the way, O’Mara was also a member of Team USA, which in 1981 became the first American effort to win the storied Trophee and Motocross des Nations.

Once The O’Show called time on it all at the conclusion of the 1990 racing season, the Californian had amassed 16 AMA national victories and two AMA national championships. His career bolstered by a fierce commitment to training and world class physical fitness, O’Mara put all of that to further use in 1996 when he went to work mentoring a young rookie racer named Ricky Carmichael. And the rest there is history. Inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2000, O’Mara is still fast at it in global supercross ad motocross racing, working as a racing advisor and confidant to the Australian brothers Jett and Hunter Lawrence. The former is recovering from a recent training crash at the Dog Pound facility, which is taking up much of O'Mara's focus at the moment.

“Jett did make a little hiccup in training, which led to small crash,” said O’Mara of the miscue that left Lawrence with a fractured right foot and ankle area and on the Injured Reserve List for the next three months.

“That just goes to show you that they’re not bullet-proof. Jett pretty much went down without the bike and then landed on his foot. That’s how the incident happened. With the big picture and if you look at what the injury was, it was a mild dislocation and fracture of the ankle. There was also the injury to the talus and navicular. The navicular is in your wrist, but it’s in your foot also. That definitely required surgery, which he got in Florida.

"We were happy with the surgeon who did it. We got lucky, you know? We didn’t have our doctors from California here. That’s always a concern for us, but we needed to get it done. We couldn’t get Jett transferred to California because of the nature of the injury. We just needed to take care of it right then and there. It turned out well. He’s resting and recovering. The first couple of weeks will be pretty tough for him. The crash didn’t touch his knee. That’s his bad knee that just got repaired last year. No problem on the knee. It was just Jett’s ankle that took a big blow.

“What is exactly that window or time period for healing?” asked O’Mara. “I’ve already heard 12 weeks, which is three months non weight-bearing. I would say it’s probably not that long in our world. He’s so young and strong and we have a great team around us with rehabilitation. We always feel like we can speed it up a little bit. That’s just me being confident in our team of people that are around us. It’ll be day by day, week by week, month by month. We’ll constantly get X-rays every two to four weeks to see how everything is looking in there. He’s got some hardware in there that instantly gave him some stability with the screws and stuff like that.

“Obviously we know just what happened to Jett a couple of days ago, so that changes his whole start of the 2026 season. Jett will just be in the recovery mode and we’ve already got his stuff all taken care of. There will be a lot of stuff in the next couple of weeks as far as rehabilitation goes. So that would be on Jett. Hunter is good to go. He’s been on a program for quite a while. Hunter is as prepared as Jett in all reality for the 2026 supercross season. 

O’Mara says he has complete faith in the reigning SuperMotocross World Championship victor.

“I never doubt him,” nodded O’Mara of Lawrence. “Look what he does. It’s crazy how genetically gifted he is and how committed he is. He has a desire to win at all costs. He’s got a pain tolerance through the roof. I don’t doubt him on anything, he just has a foot injury. He’ll live for another day. He’s 22 years old. He’s in the prime of his career. It’s a setback. You don’t like to see many of these in your career because we know each time this happens, it probably takes a little time off of your career in all reality. But I think Jett will recover fine. It has an effect on him, but I also kind of feel that it doesn’t have an effect on him. He just motivates himself to come back even stronger.”

Along the lines of the merciless, all-in approach to racing and racing preparation made world famous by Carmichael?

“Absolutely,” says O’Mara. “He’s in that category with the greatest of all time. He’s one of them with the mindset and the whole package. He’s one of the greatest, definitely. And we’re still just watching greatness right now. And we’ll continue to watch. He’ll come back and he’ll be spectacular. There is no doubt about it.

“The one thing I will say about Jett before the crash is that we were just really super happy where the bike at,” continued O'Mara. "It’s not a new bike or anything. We just keep on scraping away on that bike to make it a little bit more comfortable for the boys, meaning Hunter and Jett.  That was a little bit disappointing, because Jett was so good with this bike. He was always great with it anyways, but we felt like we made some improvements in some areas where it just makes their job a little bit easier. Hunter now has the opportunity to showcase that here in just a few weeks. He’s ready to go.”

Undisputedly the best and fastest SuperMotocross athlete on Earth, Jett Lawrence’s untimely absence from the competitive fray throws the door wide open for a new championship leader.

“It’s up for grabs now,” said O’Mara on the absence of Lawrence and his Honda CRF450RWE. “In my eyes and how I look at it, you put Jett aside a little bit. Now everybody says, ‘The series is wide open now!’ I’m sure that’s how all the guys look at it. They don’t want to see Jett hurt. In my opinion, the best guys want to beat racers. It’s bittersweet when this happens. It's open now. We’ll know after the first five, six, seven races how it is all panning out. We’ll get a feel for the lay of the land of the 2026 series. We’ll see how everyone is looking. It’s a very long series. As everyone knows it’s a marathon. I’ve always said that. I’ve said it for years. It’s a marathon. Stay healthy. Be strong after halfway. It’s like a chess match. It really is.”

O’Mara first started working with the Lawrence brothers during the summer of 2019, and up to this point in time, could not be happier with the successful trajectory of the dynamic duo.

“I couldn’t be more pleased,” he admitted. “It’s what we envisioned. It’s what I personally envisioned. I knew the skillset. I knew the skillset even before I knew Jett. I knew how good he was technically. And Hunter is right in the same category. He just had a lot of injuries earlier in the career and now you are just seeing some of the real Hunter coming out. He’s already won championships, and that’s why he is such a factor in the 450 class. Nothing surprises me at all. I don’t have a crystal ball, but it is kind of what I envisioned, for Jett to be that dominant. I feel like Jett is always going to be a threat to win every race he lines up for. Literally like a Ricky Carmichael or a James Stewart. We used to think, ‘How can anyone beat James Stewart?’ All those guys when they went to the line, there was a high possibility that they were going to win.”

Meanwhile, the bulldozers and full dump trucks are beginning to hold station over at Angel Stadium – the location for the opening round of the 2026 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship on January 10.

“I’ve been around it for so long," he says. "There is a lot of hype. I’m starting to feel that anxiety of, ‘Okay, it’s already here.’ I’ve been here so many times. We just kind of go about our business. You clock in and clock out. It’s a new season. Yeah, while the duo changed a little bit with Jett now being out, Hunter is ready. I’m happy where he is. We’re just trying to maintain our preparation right now. We’re just doing little maintenance stuff now just going into the season because it’s only a few weeks away. We know what we are racing on as far as the setups. Yeah, were ready to go. It’s just kind of like staying calm, cool and collected, you know?"

Rewind 42 years, and O’Mara clinched the 1984 AMA Supercross Championship for Team Honda. O’Mara has always remained linked to the HRC empire, and is enthused that the Lawrence brothers go out to wage war every weekend with the same badge.

“I was at Honda in the 1980s when it was the powerhouse Honda team with full HRC backing,” he said. “I’m happy with where we are at. I feel like we have the closet package and program to that. That’s going back. That’s what I envisioned. That’s important to the team. I just feel so fortunate that we were able to build this. Every single person that is on the HRC Honda team is really dedicated. Everybody does their part.

"When someone needs to step up, they step up. There is never a weak link. It’s just a well running machine – like an assembly line. We have Japan completely behind Hunter ad Jett. It’s very similar to last I saw with Honda, which was the Ricky Carmichael era with Honda. Ricky also had all that and that’s when Honda was winning a lot. Sometimes I just jump on the boys’ bikes and I just want to feel it. I don’t even put on a full set of the gear and go hit jumps. I just want to feel the acceleration of the four-stroke.

"It is truly amazing. All I have is memories. When I retired, I retired. But when I get off Jatt or Hunter’s bikes, I kind of just shake my head and say, ‘Oh man…’ I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the power delivery and how smooth the bikes are. I can’t believe how insanely gnarly they are and how fast they are. I just sit there and go, ‘Wow.’ I can see how they can jump 65 feet in first gear with a five-foot takeoff. There is nothing they can’t do if you have the skillset.”